Starsky & Hutch (season 1)

In Bay City, California, there is a shooting in which two teenage lovers are killed, and District Attorney Mark Henderson (Albert Morgenstern) thinks the intended targets were Detectives David Michael "Dave" Starsky and Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchinson, because the car that the victims were in turns out to look exactly like Starksy's red and white Ford Gran Torino. Starsky and Hutch are told by local criminal Fat Rolly (Michael Lerner) that there's a contract out on Starsky. All indications point to Frank Tallman (Gilbert Green), a local crime lord who is awaiting trial, as being behind it, but Tallman denies it, saying that someone's trying to frame him for it. With the help of their informant, Huggy Bear, Starsky and Hutch set out to find the killers, a pair of hit men named Zane (Richard Lynch) and Cannell (Michael Conrad), only to discover that one of the victims, 19-year-old Patricia Talbot (Karen Lamm), was indeed the intended target. Starsky and Hutch suspect that Zane and Cannell were hired by someone inside the department.

Henny Wilson (Arthur Peterson) and his wife Sarah (Hope Summers), an elderly couple desperate to draw attention to the horrid living conditions in their old folks home, Eastside Home For The Aged, have rigged the trunk of their car with fifty sticks of dynamite and a timer, planning to set it off outside City Hall. Henny and Sarah have spent the past two years complaining to the city about the home, and nothing's ever been done about it, so they're angry. But the car is stolen by Wilbur Sloane (Edward Walsh) and Gregg Morton (Bob Delegall), two men who are on a spree of armed robberies, and they're unaware that the car is loaded with explosives, ticking toward detonation in the trunk. Starsky and Hutch are put on the hunt for Sloane and Morton. What they learn is that Sloane is a gambling addict, and he resorts to robbery whenever he owes money to bookies who threaten to kill him if he doesn't pay them.

At 5:00am one morning, wealthy used-car dealer Zack Tyler (Med Flory) and his wife Emma Lou (Alta Christopher) stop to help John Brown Harris (Charles Napier) and Little Huey Chaco (George Loros), two men who are seemingly having car trouble, only for Chaco and Harris to rob Zack and Emma Lou, and Harris rapes and fatally strangles Emma Lou. Starsky and Hutch are assigned to the case, and they work all-out, using their underground contacts to track down Harris and Chaco, who they learn are heroin addicts, but what Starsky and Hutch don't quite realize is that once they've found Harris and Chaco, an understandably enraged Zack intends to make Harris and Chaco pay for what they did.

Starsky and Hutch, along with three highly experienced detectives -- Kalowitz (Bill Sorrells), Burke (Paul Benjamin), and Corman (Richard Venture) -- are involved in a large drug bust, where pure cocaine with a street value of $4,000,000 is seized. Following the successful raid, Starsky and Hutch come under suspicion when $1,000,000 worth of the Cocaine disappears. Captain Dobey gives Starsky and Hutch 48 hours to clear their names and those of Kalowitz, Burke, and Corman, who they assume to be innocent, and nail Stryker (Gilbert Green), the drug kingpin behind everything. Captain Dobey REALLY wants to nail Stryker. That's because Stryker is the man who killed Captain Dobey's best friend and former partner Elmo Jackson years ago -- Elmo was found hung on a hook in a meat factory. Now, Starsky and Hutch's informant, Marty Crandell (George Dzundza), is found dead, and throughout the case, Hutch keeps spotting a Dalmatian that seems to appear whenever danger lurks nearby.

Hutch is dating Jeanie Waldon (Leigh Christian), who was formerly associated with big-time crime boss Ben Forest (Robert Loggia). But Hutch is abducted by the jealous Ben, who has him tied up and injected with heroin, in order to get him to say where Jeanie is at. Ben thinks Jeanie belongs to him and no one else, and Ben won't let anything stand in his way. Now Starsky must find and rescue Hutch. After Ben finds Jeanie, Hutch escapes and is found by Starsky and two other cops. Starsky is furious when he sees the needle marks on Hutch's arm. He and Huggy Bear try to nurse Hutch back to health. Ben is furious that Hutch escaped. He tells his right-hand man, Allen "Monk" Philos (Geoffrey Lewis), to make sure Hutch gets killed. Hutch tells Starsky that the men who took him wanted Jeanie. Starsky heads out to find the men who took Hutch, and rescue Jeanie, but Hutch, not to be left behind, heads out a short time later to do the same thing, even though he's not in any condition to.

When Starsky and Hutch respond to an armed robbery, one of the masked robbers, 22-year-old Joseph Tramaine (Gregory Rozakis), gets away with $200, and Starsky is forced to fatally shoot the other robber in self defense -- and the robber that Starsky shot turns out to be 16-year-old Lonnie Malcolm Craig. Lonnie's mother Eunice (Hilda Hayes) is devastated, and Starsky feels extremely guilty. A coroner's inquest is opened. Tramaine turns out to be a drug-addict who commits robberies so he can get money to feed his addiction with. The case gets the attention of George A. Prudholm (Stephen McNally), a thoroughly enraged man with a grudge against Starsky. George calls the station and warns them that if Starsky is cleared, then the cops will pay in spades. Starsky is cleared of any wrong-doing, and he and Hutch want to find whoever supplied Lonnie with the gun. Because Starsky was cleared, George starts killing cops, demanding Starsky's resignation, and promising that the killings will continue until Starsky complies. Two years ago, Starsky and Hutch's first assignment after being promoted out of uniform was working undercover on a narcotics investigation at McKinley High School. Starsky arrested George's 19-year-old son, Gary Vincent Prudholm, for dealing drugs, and Gary got stabbed to death in the city jail. George was devastated, and he has always blamed Starsky for Gary's death. George wants Starsky to pay in spades. He wants Starsky to resign and get his name dragged through the mud, and then he wants to kill Starsky.

Starsky's ex-girlfriend Helen Davidson, a fellow cop, is found murdered, with her body bizarrely wrapped in radio antenna wire. As Starsky and Hutch investigate, it emerges that Helen had been working undercover as a go-go dancer at the Mellow Yellow to stop a violent burglary ring, and she had been undercover for two months. The Mellow Yellow, which is owned by Ruby Solenko (Victor Argo), seems to be the ring's headquarters. Two days before Helen was killed, she spotted someone tailing her, and she was afraid that she had blown her cover. There are several suspects as to the killer's identity, as Starsky and Hutch figure out that they're up against a serial killer.

Starsky and Hutch are put on the case when Captain Dobey and his family are terrorized by Leo Moon (William Watson), a crooked ex-Cop who has just escaped from prison and is determined to make Dobey pay in spades for putting him away. Dobey and Moon went through the police academy together. About five years ago, Moon was convicted of extortion and murder. Dobey was instrumental in putting Moon away, and now Moon wants to make Dobey pay in spades for that. But Dobey is trying to solve a cold case -- the murder of civil rights leader Isaac Douglas, who was one of Dobey's best friends. Isaac was killed a little over a year ago. Starsky and Hutch get a lead on a company called Woodfield Industries, whose CEO is C. J. Woodfield (Lester Rawlins). Starsky and Hutch suspect that Woodfield might be involved up to his neck in Douglas's murder. Woodfield Industries was one of the companies that Douglas named as getting special treatment on city contracts. Starsky and Hutch figure out that Douglas had the goods on Woodfield, so Woodfield had Douglas killed. Dobey re-opening the murder investigation would heat things up for Woodfield, so Woodfield had Moon sprung from prison, so Moon can kill Dobey for him, which Moon would only be too happy to do.

Starsky and Hutch set about tracking down a dock-worker suspected of murdering Officer Ed Jamieson (Joe Warfield), an undercover cop who was investigating a series of waterfront heists. Hutch's childhood friend Nancy Blake (Sheila Larken) is preparing to get married, and it seems that her groom-to-be, Billy Desmond (Stephen McHattie), might be involved in the heists.

John Colby (Art Hindle), an old friend of Starsky and Hutch's that they went through the academy with, had ended up leaving the department and going into the Air Force, and now, John shows up with a story about being presumed dead while spending five years in a POW camp in Vietnam, and he asks them to help him find his ex-wife Karen (Suzan Gailey) and young son Corey. Starsky and Hutch are only too happy to help out an old friend, but when they locate Karen, she says she's never seen John before in her life. It turns out that he's an imposter named Mike. Karen is now the wife of Warren G. Karpel (Peter Brandon), the former chief accountant for crime boss Nate Garvin (Gene Darcy). Warren is now a federal witness who's about to testify against Garvin, and Mike is the man that Garvin has hired to kill Warren.

After the particularly long and awkward interrogation of Harry Sample (Danny Wells), who has been accused of putting a 19-year-old woman in a coma, Starsky and Hutch decide to unwind for the evening by going for a meal at Giovanni's, an Italian restaurant down by the docks. But the evening out is hardly the relaxing time that they had anticipated when the mostly empty restaurant is taken over by Tom Lockly (Albert Paulsen) and Joey Martin (Steven Keats), two hit-men who are planning to take out powerful mob boss Vic Monte when he arrives at the restaurant. One of the hostages is a comedian named Sammy Grovner (Norman Fell). In the commotion, Joey shoots Starsky in the back, and leaves him severely wounded, and Hutch must try to keep Starsky alive, and handle Joey and Tom. It turns out that Theresa De Fusto (Jess Walton), who runs the restaurant, is understandably enraged at Monte because he had her teenage brother killed. And Joey and Tom had threatened to kill Theresa's mother if Theresa didn't set them up with a time to kill Monte at the restaurant.

While Starsky and Hutch are having breakfast at a restaurant, where a waitress named Amy (Mellisa Newman) has been waiting for her friend Harry Johnson, who guards armored cars for Ames Armored Car Service, to arrive at his usual time, but Harry still hasn't arrived. Starsky offers for himself and Hutch to find Harry. Amy tells them where Harry's apartment is, and they go there, only to find Harry dead, leading them to stumble across a plot to rob an armored car by a gang that's holding driver Tom Cole's (John Ritter) pregnant wife Ellie (Linda Kelsey) hostage. They have told Tom that they'll kill Ellie if he doesn't help them.

Six months ago, for five weeks, down-on-his-luck jazz pianist Vic Rankin (Dane Clark) played piano at the GW, a jazz club owned by Gil White (Arthur David Roberts), and White never paid him. White owes Vic $2000. After being assaulted by White's right-hand man, Gordon Foote (Zitto Kazann), Vic steals the $2000, unaware that the money is actually counterfeit. In over his head, Vic finds himself a hunted man, and goes on the run, as White, who is connected to the Mob, sends his heavies out to retrieve the money and wipe out the man who dared to steal it. The race is on for Starsky and Hutch to find Vic before White and his men get to him.